Sachin Sharma, founder of ProcureDesk, shows how to stop ad-hoc purchases via Slack and email by centralizing all requests in one place, tracking them through five stages, and measuring where delays happen. A simple spreadsheet works if you don't have software.
If you're a controller of a company and you're dealing with uncontrolled spend, like for example, people buy whenever they want to buy, or people order through emails or Slack messages and you're always wondering who ordered what, then this video is for you. Because in this video I'm going to break down three simple things you can do to implement a simple procurement process. When you do not have a procurement process, that means people are just doing what they feel is the best way to manage procurement. So if you're joining me for the first time, welcome. My name is Sachin Sharma. I am the founder of procuredesk, where we help growing companies automate their procurement process. So let's jump right in, let's see what are the typical challenges and how you can overcome that when it comes to implementing a procurement process. Number one is not having a single place for tracking your purchase requests. Listen, Slack messages are easy, text messages are easy, emails are easy, but they don't scale. Things get lost in emails. People just buy whatever they want to buy. They later tell you after they have purchased it. It just defeats the purpose of having a system to track all the spending. And you're continuously chasing people for receipts or trying to understand who bought what. So an easy fix for this is to have a single place for for tracking all purchase requests. That could be a system, preferably like Procuredesk, where you have people going in and putting in the request, or you could just start with whatever works for you. It could be a simple spreadsheet as well. Right, just to start with. But you do need a single place to track all purchase requests and then have the discipline for the team to go in and put in those requests. Number two is once you have a single place, the challenge comes is do you know where it is in the process? So for example, let's say you implemented a email based process for people to put in requests, so is the request approved? Or if you look at like a simple process, like we break down procurement into five simple steps like request approved, issue a purchase order, get the product and then pay the vendor. So where exactly it is from your purchase request standpoint. So you need that visibility so that your team can answer those questions when people are asking, hey, was a vendor paid? Was my product ordered? And so on. So definitely once you have single place, have a system that provides you visibility into these five steps and preferably have a system that can actually enable self service where employees can go and check on their own, you don't have to keep on Answering those questions again and again, Right? Number three is the fear of process. Right? So what we see very common is very companies, it's just kind of don't want to implement a process for the fear of that it is going to slow down things people might call it, it's bureaucratic, it's you, whatever you want to name it, right? We are becoming a big company. Whatever you want. What's your favorite, I would say term here is now, if you really think about it, is not paying vendors on time or not having the product when you need it, is it better than not having a process? And the answer is, of course no. You have better have a process. Now, how do you make sure that the process is not slowing down things? Here are a couple of things you can do. One is track how long does it take. Number two is track the entire bottleneck. So if there is a process and the process has a bottleneck, let's say somebody's taking a lot of time to approve something, you might want to talk to them to understand what's really going on, right? So that's just a way to understand how well the process is working. So just to recap, if you are dealing with, you know, uncontrolled spending, people using whatever they want to use, the three things that you want to implement in a simple procurement process is, number one, have a single place to track all your requests. Number two, have complete visibility into your process. And number three is make sure you're tracking the process so you implement something that is fast. Now, if you are in a position where you're struggling with these things and you want to see how a procurement system can help speed things up, click on the link below and talk to one of our product specialists and we can walk you through how procuredesk can help implement a simple procurement process. Thanks for joining me today and I'll see you in the next video.
